


When The Cold Sets In

by twdsunshine



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 04:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19041415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twdsunshine/pseuds/twdsunshine
Summary: When the arrival of winter causes the reader to lose faith, can Daryl Dixon pull her back from the brink?





	When The Cold Sets In

**Author's Note:**

> This was a request from @superdeadwalker on Tumblr. Gotta say, I loved writing this one - it’s me back in my comfort zone. You’ll see what I mean when you read it I’m sure. Thanks for checking it out and I hope you enjoy!

The chill had seeped all the way down to your bones.  It turned them to ice, brittle and grating, so that every movement hurt, joints aching, muscles tight.  Even your blood felt cold, pumping lethargically through your veins, stubbornly insisting that you live on, even when you felt like dying.  The world as you knew it had changed yet again.  You thought you’d learnt to deal with the hand you’d been dealt, the life fate had chosen for you.  You’d adapted when the dead had started walking, taught yourself to fight, to scavenge, bonded with a group of survivors to ensure that you’d never have to be alone, and you thought that it would all be okay from there on out.  But you were wrong. **  
**

The storm had come from nowhere.  No, not nowhere.  Daryl had predicted it, training piercing eyes on the steely sky and shaking his head.  But it had been so much worse than any of you had imagined.  A blanket of white fell, thick and fast, smothering the landscape, suffocating it so that all that was good withered away.  You’d been on your way back from the Kingdom when the blizzard had started, a mass of you, snaking through the countryside as fat, white flakes settled on your noses, freezing your eyelashes until it hurt to blink.  It had seemed hopeless, and there had been times when you’d felt that you couldn’t possibly go on, but you had, for those that walked beside you, forcing yourself to put one foot in front of the other, even when you sunk knee deep into the drifts.

And then you’d felt it, beneath the snow: a bony hand wrapping around your ankle, tugging sharply until you fell face first into the cold, a strangled scream escaping you.  

‘Help me!’

Around you, people had spun, eyes wide in horror as you battled an invisible threat, and then the ground began to shift and quake and the banks erupted as corpses rose up from beneath, as ravenous as ever despite the fact that their ragged clothes were frozen to their frames.

'Y/N!’  You’d heard the archer call your name, glanced up to see him start towards you, but he’d been attacked from behind, disappearing from view as you writhed, helpless.  

You kicked out, grimacing when you felt the heel of your boot collide with something hard, bone giving way as you drove your foot down again and again.  Your knuckles scraped against the ice as you scrambled to crawl away, the skin splitting and staining the white vivid red, but then the movement from below stilled and you struggled upright.  Your eyes flickered wildly from body to body as those you loved continued to fight, and more and more monsters emerged from the snow, and the image of the pikes still lingered in the back of your mind, and suddenly it all became too much.

You screamed.

 

* * *

 

The fire danced in the grate, sending shadows skittering over the walls and the huddled figures crowded into Aaron’s living room.  One of the only buildings in the Safe Zone with a functioning fireplace, it seemed that the whole community was squeezed between these four walls and still you shivered, unable to drive away the chill that had penetrated deep into your core.  You’d found a corner, a couple of feet of space to claim as your own and, as people finally began to doze around you, finding peace in sleep, you leant your head back against the cool plaster, sucking in a deep breath and wrapping your arms tight around yourself.

'Hey, ya still cold?’  Disturbed by your fidgeting, Daryl had eased himself up onto his elbows and was watching you with concern, finally pushing himself upright when you didn’t respond and picking his way to your side. Your teeth chattered and his eyes narrowed as he gave a brisk shake of his head.  'Here, take this.’  He shrugged off his poncho, warm and heavy and scented with smoke, and draped it over you, chewing on his lip as you nestled into its thick folds.  'Ya shoulda said somethin’.’

'I’m fine,’ you lied.  He didn’t argue, instead wrapping an arm around your shoulders so he could pull you into his side, the heat that radiated from him, naturally it seemed, a welcome relief.

For a long while, you both sat in silence, Daryl’s hand moving over you - the back of your neck, your shoulder, down the length of your arm - gently rubbing the feeling back into your muscles, his touch scorching hot against the cold that held you in its grip.  

'Thank you.’

'Ya gonna tell me what happened out there today?’

You tensed and you knew he felt it, because, if anything, he held you tighter, as if trying to reassure you without being able to find the words.  The fire cast a burning orange glow over his face, deepening the appearance of his frown lines and setting his usually blue eyes aflame in a vibrant amber.  'What do you mean?’

'Don’t play dumb with me, girl,’ he chided you, gently, voice a soft rasp.  'Ya lost it for a while there.  Thought we weren’t gonna getcha back at all.  What happened?’

'Bad day,’ you mumbled, attempting a shrug, though you were too deeply buried in the poncho for it to be visible.  'For everyone, I guess.’

'Ya can say that again.’  He snagged his bottom lip between his teeth, gnawing at it as he thought, and you wondered if he was back there, reliving it - the blinding white swirling all around you, or maybe Alpha and the sickening pikes just days before.  'Still, ain’t ever seen ya go to pieces like that.  Ya scared the hell outta me.’

'I didn’t mean to.’

'So, what happened?’

Again, you shrugged, but, from the look on his face, sleep was still a long way off, and you knew he was dogged in his determination when his mind was set.  So, you sighed.  'It all just got too much, y'know?  I thought I knew how to live in this world.  I thought I had it down.  Whatever comes, we face it: the Governor and Terminus and the walkers and Negan.  We just keep fighting until we take them down.  But this…’  You nodded your head toward the window where the snow was falling once again.  'This is new.’

'Don’t mean we can’t get through it.’

'But how?’  You didn’t mean to be difficult, really you didn’t.  If anything, you were desperate for him to make you see.  'We can’t fight the weather.  We can’t travel when it’s like this.  We can’t go out for supplies.  And our gardens, the ones at Hilltop, they’re going to be ruined.  Everything will die.’

'Hey.’  Hearing the rising agitation in your voice, Daryl sought to comfort you, but you were too worked up now to stop.

'And there are walkers under the snow, Daryl.  We can’t see them and we can’t hear them, but they’re there, just waiting for us.  It’s like the world got sick of how easy we’d made things for ourselves and thought it’d up its game or something!  And I can’t- I can’t do it anymore!  I just can’t!  It’s too much!’

‘Hey,’ he said again, and then meaty fingers tangled in your hair, coaxing your face into the crook of his neck so you could muffle your cries and suck in deep lungfuls of his earthy musk.  ‘It won’t last.  It’ll pass.  Always has before.’

‘When?  How long will it take for all of this to melt away?’

‘S’long as it takes.’  You pulled away, your gaze locking on his as the tears on your cheeks gleamed golden.  He tilted his head to one side, tucking the poncho up around your chin, until every part of you except your tear-streaked face was shrouded in the toasty weight of it.  He was trying so hard, you thought, to shield you from the cold, and you were sitting there crying about the snow, and it wasn’t really about that.  Not at all.  It was about the bleak path that lay ahead; an enemy that killed carelessly and showed no mercy; the fall of the Kingdom; dwindling supplies in an overcrowded town; and that damn chill that still sat in the pit of your stomach.  He knew it.  Somehow you knew that he knew it.  And when he ducked to press his forehead to yours, voice just a whisper over the soft snores of those sleeping around you, you breathed him in: his calm, his strength, his solidity.  ‘Listen to me, alright?  I ain’t gonna let this break ya.  I seen ya go toe to toe with the biggest baddest sons’ of bitches out there ‘n’ a lil’ storm ain’t gonna take ya down now, ya hear me?’

You wanted to nod, to believe him, but it all seemed so hopeless, so instead you closed your eyes, and listened to the sincerity behind his words.

‘We’ve been through a lotta shit, you ‘n’ me.  Done a lot o’ shit too.  ‘N’ ya know how we got through it all?’  He didn’t wait for a reply.  ‘Together.  S’how it’s always been.  S’why we’ve got this far, right?  This ain’t no different.’

A stream of images flashed across your mind: Daryl’s hand reaching for yours as the prison burned, towing you behind him as he ran for the cover of the forest; the bulk of his body shielding you from the hungry stares of the Terminus cannibals, half-turned, ready to protect you at all costs; the curl of his lip as you tended to the wounds that Negan’s men had inflicted on him, the sting of the antiseptic making him hiss in pain.  For a moment, you were lost in them, reliving them and so many more.  And it occurred to you that maybe he was right.  Each time had felt like the end of the world, and each time you fought back harder, courageous with Daryl at your side.

‘Ya with me?’ he prompted eventually, nudging against you and pulling you back from your reverie.  You nodded.  ‘Good.  Thought I lost ya there.’

‘No,’ you reassured him, finally allowing your eyes to open and find his, your vision blurring at his close proximity.  ‘No, I think I was just… finding myself again, actually.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’  You tilted your chin up, cold noses brushing for a second, foreheads parting as your mouth found his, tentative, searching, sealing the deal that you’d just made in your head.  If you’d thought he’d pull away you’d been wrong.  He remained perfectly still, as if afraid of spooking you, waiting for you to pull back on your own before licking the salty taste of you from his lips.  ‘You’re right.  As long as you’re okay, I’ll be okay.  That’s how it works, right?’

‘S’right.  Just gotta keep fightin’, girl.  You ‘n’ me, gonna fight together.’


End file.
